How To Look Beyond A Resume In The Hiring Process

While a candidate’s resume and cover letter certainly give you insight into what they can add to your team, in 2016, it’s important to extend your hiring efforts beyond these materials in order to select the employee who’s the best fit for your business. Here are some other factors certainly worth considering during the hiring process:

The candidate’s potential

Perhaps they don’t have the management experience you’re looking for, or they lack the Master’s degree you hoped they’d have. These are things that should be noted, but it’s also important to analyze the candidate’s potential. Would they bring enthusiasm and energy to the office? Do they have fresh ideas that could enhance your business? Do they have the potential to grow into a leader? These factors are highly important and should be given equal weight during the hiring process.

The candidate’s personality type

Your candidate may look picture perfect on paper, but if you bring them on board and find that their personality clashes with your veteran staff members, you’ll quickly regret your hiring choice. While assessing skills and experience is necessary, you’ll also want to consider what the day-to-day within your office will look like, should you actually extend an offer to this individual. Will they enhance the morale within the business, or will they be the cause of heated clashes?

Their individual goals

Turnover is highly disruptive to a company, so ideally you’ll find someone who will join your business and stick with you for an extended period of time. As you go through the hiring process, it’s important to have a conversation about the candidate’s long-term goals. If they talk about the desire for management experience and how they’d like to shape their department within the company, you can assume that they’re fairly invested in your business. However, if they start talking about moving to a desert island and starting their own jewelry-making company, it’s fair to say that they may not have an interest in sticking around for the long haul.

Their ability to embrace new technology

Regardless of the industry you’re in, technology plays a major part in business today. It’s always changing and evolving, and the products we rely heavily on today may be totally different 10 or 20 years from now. The ideal candidate will embrace technology and have a willingness to learn about new programs and tools to make their work better. Those who refuse to adopt technology into their daily work routine may impede their own ability to perform.

Their desire to grow

Lastly, a candidate’s ability to reflect on their strengths and weaknesses is important. You want an employee who’s aware of what they do well and where they can improve. An individual who assumes that everything they do is as good as it can be already will never learn new skills or

enhance their pre-existing abilities.

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